This is the joint website of Women Against Rape and Black Women's Rape Action Project. Both organisations are based on self-help and provide support, legal information and advocacy. We campaign for justice and protection for all women and girls, including asylum seekers, who have suffered sexual, domestic and/or racist violence.

WAR was founded in 1976. It has won changes in the law, such as making rape in marriage a crime, set legal precedents and achieved compensation for many women. BWRAP was founded in 1991. It focuses on getting justice for women of colour, bringing out the particular discrimination they face. It has prevented the deportation of many rape survivors. Both organisations are multiracial.

Welfare Reform Bill

The government and its Minister for Women Harriet Harman have made a great show of their commitment to support women against domestic violence. But measures in the Welfare Reform Bill which give traumatised victims of domestic violence only brief respite from the job-seeking requirement, and grant ex-partners more rights over children to prolong their hurtful and dangerous involvement, prove otherwise.

We urge you to help stop these uncaring measures before they become law. Please add your name to the statement at the end, and circulate to others concerned with women and children’s safety.

You can’t put a time limit as if everyone was the same.

Excerpts: "If the government forces women escaping domestic violence to work after one month, they obviously have no idea what they’re doing...You can’t really put a time limit as if everyone was the same…It is very much down to how each individual heals and if they heal at all…

Also you may be able to exit this relationship physically but that doesn’t mean that the abuse stops there. You are in a mental prison after having been controlled for so long…

Being forced into a work situation prematurely has a very high risk of backfiring. I am certain that the crime rate would increase and so would the suicide rate…To me it seems that victims of violence keep getting victimised…"
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* Abolish Income Support. The Welfare Reform Bill treats mothers as “workless”, ignoring their vital caring work. Income Support is a crucial entitlement ensuring the basic human right to survive -- for mothers, other carers who cannot get Carers’ Allowance, those they care for, victims of domestic violence and other vulnerable people, young and old.